A comment I received to my last post mentioned that my whole writing experience has mushroomed in the short time she has known me. She wondered if I ever dreamed that everything would come together as fast as it did…

Her comment was a wonderful opportunity to pause and reflect. I realized that I didn’t have an immediate answer.

After some thought, this was my reply:

Hi, Diane. Your kind comments led me to think about whether I ever dreamed about such things, etc. I think writing was one of many dreams I had throughout life that I knew were highly unlikely to come true such as many people have regarding becoming a professional ball player, a superstar actor, or winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

Once I realized that I had at least some modest ability to write song lyrics a few years ago, my pipe dreams regarding other types of writing seemed to me to feel a little less far-fetched.

As I don’t tend to enjoy long projects–-another reason that writing a full-length non-fiction book seemed very unlikely–-I began to try short projects such as blog postings, poetry, and then children’s books, and found that I also loved those forms of writing.

Always, in the back of my mind, I thought some of my original stories and blog posts might be of interest to readers as part of a book, but since I don’t enjoy long projects and do like to focus on doing things I love to do, writing a non-fiction book still seemed to be more of a pipe dream–-until 2 or 3 days ago.

What changed? I don’t really know. All of a sudden I had the passion to write a non-fiction book that I’d never had before. I’ve learned that once my passion for something flares, I need to go for it with all I’ve got as I never know how long it will be until something else comes along for which my passion burns even brighter.

Thank you for your comment, Diane. I enjoyed the mental exercise to which your comments led.

Russ